


if(touched by love's own secret)we

by Shachaai



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha Victor Nikiforov, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Breeding, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, Omega Katsuki Yuuri, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Vaguely Resolved Sexual Tension That Really Needs Much More Resolving, emotional slowburn hell, heavy societal pressure to procreate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:48:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14662673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: You can’t colonise a planet long-term unless you, as a society, reproduce, and youcertainlycan’t colonise a planet if your population is in decline long before your colony ship has landed on that planet in the first place.The intergenerational UESSYatagarasuis 72 years into its journey to its people’s new home. With a great many of the people on-board born already-sterile, the future of the ship rests heavily on those on-board who are still capable of creating children. Things aren’t desperate - yet -, but it would be best if measures are taken before thingsdoget desperate.In which Yuuri is just looking for someone to like him as a person rather than just a baby-maker, Viktor is looking hopelessly for someone who looks beyond all his shiny accolades, and two desperately pining idiots make a baby and then a relationship and then a family in an unusually messy order. In space.





	if(touched by love's own secret)we

**Journey Time: 72 years, 7 months, 1 weeks, 3 days**

For the fifth year in a row, the birth rate has dropped. Since the crude death rate has remained roughly the same, it means the rate of natural increase has dropped as well - even further into the negative.

The new percentage - -0.68%, to 2 decimal points - glares at Yuuri in accusing red through the screen installed in his bathroom mirror, an unfriendly wake-up call that almost masks the wet glob of toothpaste Yuuri still has smeared at the corner of his mouth. Not one of his most attractive looks, but bed-rumpled, bleary-eyed and seemingly foaming at the mouth is still a lot better than _hungover,_ which had been Yuuri’s grudging outfit of choice for a good few mornings following the disaster showing he’d made at the recently-concluded Intership Games. (The two looks take the same basic approach to carving out a hole where Yuuri’s dignity should be, but _hungover_ has more regret involved via the way of glitter, backless tops, booty shorts and headaches from hell.)

 _Set the bar low_ is Yuuri’s new motto. If he ever manages to turn up to work looking like a human being rather than some kind of monster that has barely evolved from the slimy muck that has to get fished out of the pre-treated used water tank every day, people will be mistake him for someone competent.

Thus thankful his toothpaste _faux pas_ has been caught before he gets hauled away to medbay for a mysterious outbreak of rabies, Yuuri wipes his mouth, pats his face dry, and then flicks his hand to make the screen display bring up the next priority message in his morning list as he puts on his glasses.

Unsurprisingly, the next message is from Minako-sensei, bright and early and prepared to heap doom on Yuuri’s day _._ Minako Okukawa is an old ( _old_ ) family friend who is as good as an aunt to Yuuri and his older sister (albeit a crazy wine aunt), and also his boss/the Chief Executive Officer of Recreations on-board the UESS _Yatagarasu._ Her message is personalised, as it always is for her chief officers, but succinct.

Currently, the new population figures have only been released to the chief executives and command structure of _Yatagarasu,_ but will go live to the rest of the ship in three days time. There will be an important _do-not-be-late-for-this-Yuuri-Katsuki-or-I-will-drag-you-there-by-your-ear-myself_ meeting this morning to prepare for the inevitable dip in morale the release of the new figures will cause, because frankly the new figures are depressing. Questions will be asked of the Breeding Programme, and the Mental Health department wants extra work from the Recreations department to provide people healthy, productive distractions from the realisation that, once again, their ship has ended the year with less people on it than when the year began, and so very few of the remainder are children.

More people are sterile than ever, and a society without children is a hopeless one.

It isn’t going to be a good morning.

 

It isn’t a good morning.

Yuuri gets to the meeting early enough he manages to slide into the seat at the table beside Minako - who might threaten him with torture in the name of punctuality, but loves him dearly enough that Yuuri knows if anyone _else_ threatens him with similar or worse, she’ll murder them for his sake. (Truly, a good aunt in all but DNA. Even Yuuri’s grandparents have adopted her as though she is one of their own, and the four of them plus Minako are an absolute menace when it comes to drink at family parties.)

The morning’s news has Minako frowning down at her datapad, looking older and more tired than Yuuri usually sees her in public, but she looks up with a weary smile when he takes the seat beside her, reaching out with a friendly hand and wrist to ruffle his bedhead. “Morning, kiddo.”

“ _Minako-sensei,_ ” Yuuri complains halfheartedly, ducking away from her grasp and its impromptu scenting before Minako can mess up all the hard work he’d put into at least _trying_ to make the stubborn dark mess called his hair lie flat that morning. The rest of the Recreations department is used to him looking like a swamp-monster, but there is still a microscopical chance he can still make a good impression on people who _haven’t_ met his particular brand of hopeless yet.

“Oh, are we picking on Yuuri before the meeting starts?” The First Chief Operating Officer of Recreations - and Yuuri’s close colleague -, Nicolau Passos Rebelo, appears at the empty seat beside Yuuri with a smile far too teasing for so early in the daycycle, slapping down his palm on Yuuri’s shoulder and completely blocking Yuuri’s only avenue of escape. Yuuri is never bringing Nicolau lunch again.

“We are _not,_ ” Yuuri tells Nicolau with as much dignity as he can muster, and leans his body away from the older man when Nicolau turns his wrist upwards teasingly - forced, once more, into seeking refuge in Minako -, the scent-gland there far too close to Yuuri’s skin for his comfort. “Don’t you dare.”

Nicolau’s personal pheromones smell of _oranges,_ bright and sunshine-y and mixed with some other kind of tart fruit. Since Nicolau is a beta, it might be a more muted smell than if he were an alpha or an omega, but, with Yuuri’s hair already freshly-scented by Minako and her personal alpha scent of something very close to plum wine, if Nicolau adds _his_ scent on top of the mix, Yuuri is going to smell like a fruit cocktail.

 _Or an alcoholic,_ his brain adds with mounting despair, as some of the other people who have already shown up to the meeting are beginning to give Yuuri rather dubious looks across the table. This is doing _nothing_ to fix his ship-wide reputation for being a drunken mess. _They’ll probably name a drink after me in the bars, and that will be all that survives of me by the time we reach Alpha Centauri._

Nicolau’s removes his hand but his grin slides wider, and _ugh,_ that’s too much shiny teeth. “ _Yuuri_ , you don’t you want to let others know that we’re just one big happy family in Recreations?”

“Have you _met_ my sister?” Yuuri asks him with some disbelief. Mari Katsuki is a name that is feared in certain quarters of _Yatagarasu_ (usually, she is the one who gets called to deal with the binges of Minako and their disreputable grandparents) _._ “Family’s not a good idea.”

“Mari loves you and supports you,” Minako drolly recites from behind Yuuri, completely lacking in any sort of verve that would give her words sincerity and already looking at her datapad again.

Yuuri cranes his head back to look at her when Nicolau sits beside him. “Nee-chan threw me in one of the baths last week.”

Minako only hums at him. “You probably deserved it.”

“She was also the one who drank the last of your favourite saké last month.” A good two weeks before the next batch could be made and brought in.

Minako’s datapad hits the table so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t crack in half, and both Yuuri and Nicolau wince. “She told me one of the guests demanded it!”

After the bath incident, Yuuri has no problem in serenely throwing his older sister in the metaphorical deep-end. Mari can fend for herself, and _deserves_ to. “She lied.”

“Is that how I raised that girl, to brazenly lie to my face?!” Minako has been hit where it hurts - in the alcohol-supply - and it shows, her expression outraged. “My favourite saké! We had an _agreement!_ ”

Mindful of the risks to his own life and limb (he’s sitting within grabbing distance), Yuuri tactfully does not tell Minako that agreements made between a woman and her bottles of booze are not legally binding. The rest of the people due at the meeting soon show up anyway, gradually silencing Minako’s huffing, and Yuuri himself slinks down further into his seat when he realises just _how_ important the meeting is.

The _First Lieutenant_ is there. The Captain is not there because her presence away from the bridge during her regular shift is a phenomenon usually observed only during festivities and emergencies, and this meeting is still meant to be kept quiet from most of the ship. But the First Lieutenant, Yakov Feltsman, is there in the Captain’s place, and Yuuri is very invested in keeping out of the man’s line of sight, especially as the lieutenant’s face gradually darkens into a deep, disapproving scowl as the select chief staff of the _Yatagarasu -_ reproductive health doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, Breeding Programme officials, and others - slowly divert the meeting topic from _how can we keep people from despairing about the low birth rate and severely negative RNI?_ to _how can we fix the low birth rate and severely negative RNI?_

The new topic has many tangents, primarily about ways and means to encourage the fertile alphas and omegas on-board to _just have more babies_ (because of course, no-one has _ever_ thought of that before), and all of them are deeply uncomfortable for Yuuri.

The tangents become even more uncomfortable when one of the psychologists sitting nearby the Recreations team notices the tiny mark tattooed on Yuuri’s collarbone, exposed by the low cut of his uniform’s black shirt: a thin black ring with a much smaller solid blue circle set inside it. The tattoo of a fertile omega.

The psychologist addresses her next question directly to Yuuri - why does _he_ think people like him aren’t having more babies? In his opinion, is it a generational problem?

Questions from others immediately follow, far too many, too quickly, for Yuuri to possibly answer - if the answers were any of their business! If he even knew the answers to them! -, each one sharper than the last, and Minako’s scent flares up beside him in protective response. As does Nicolau’s on the other side actually, which Yuuri is suddenly rather pathetically grateful for, taking some comfort from the show of support.

The smell of plums and oranges fills the air around Yuuri, blanketing him in the soothing, familiar scent of friends and family, and making it just _that_ much harder from the aggressive, spiking anxiety-scent of others to reach him and set off his own nerves.

He is a _protected_ cocktail.

Even if the smell probably just makes them think he’s too drunk to successfully carry a pregnancy to term.

The First Lieutenant speaks up before actual hell can let loose - and Minako can start yelling -, but even after Yakov rebukes them all, he still has to remind the table four more times during the meeting that they are _not_ there that morning to find a solution for the natality problem, but to discuss measures in response to the imminent release of the latest figures. When the figures had been released the year before, a sterile alpha woman had tried to throw herself off a balcony above the Main Park in despair. She had been pulled back from the edge and talked out of further suicide attempts, but nobody wants something similar to happen this year.

Three and a half hours later, nothing has been particularly decided except everyone wants Recreations to create an idea for some kind of new event or entertainment to rejuvenate the ship before the week is out, and everyone ends the meeting with a headache. The Breeding Programme officials leave the room as fast as is humanly possible, quick to escape the sour condemnation that hangs around the meeting table in a stink of fear and frustration, and Yuuri bravely hides behind Minako and Nicolau so that no-one else will bother him - though that doesn’t stop people shooting pointed _looks_ at his tattooed collarbone and empty belly, as though they expect him to immediately start repopulating the ship alone.

What do they want him to do, grab the first virile alpha or beta that wanders by and mate them in the corridor?!

“ _Just have more babies,_ ” Nicolau says with disgust, firmly putting himself between Yuuri and the rest of the room when it looks like someone might actually walk over to try and talk with him. It’s very reassuring; Nicolau has a decade’s more bulk on his bones than Yuuri does, and a jawline that could break boulders. “You think people haven’t been trying? My Lúcia just finished her fourth round of IVF, and it didn’t take.”

Minako’s annoyed expression at the slowly-emptying room shifts into one of sympathy. “Oh, _Nico._ I’m so sorry.”

Yuuri has met Nicolau’s wife, Lúcia, before. They’ve had dinner together. The woman is a fertile omega, like Yuuri, with the two circles tattooed on her collarbone, and she and Nicolau are happily mated and married - despite the fact they badly want children, and Nicolau is a sterile beta male. As Lúcia is a medical doctor with high intelligence and fitness scores, she is classified as part of the _top percentile_ of fertile omegas - _like Yuuri -_ , which means that the Breeding Programme had waited until after she was twenty-eight to offer assistance in getting her pregnant, so that nothing would interrupt her important career. However, Lúcia and Nicolau are now both approaching thirty-three, and they still have no children.

“They’ll want you both to try again,” Yuuri says quietly. Again, and again. There are still enough virile alphas on-board to donate their DNA. Not all of them jerkwads who harass Yuuri on his irregular nights out.

“Yes,” says Nicolau. Halts. Looks over his shoulder to check the room has cleared apart from them, and then looks back at Yuuri and Minako. Licks his lips. “We have been thinking. Of arranging a Breeding Heat.”

A Breeding Heat.

Yuuri goes stiff.

“For three?” Minako asks mildly, and Nicolau nods. “They’re more common than you think, you know. Two mates and a third, or even just one of the breeding partners bringing in a friend.”

Some of the tenseness Yuuri hadn’t even realised his colleague was holding drops from Nicolau’s shoulders. “Have you been part of one?”

“Oh yes, back in the day.” Minako smiles, and Nicolau relaxes further. Yuuri looks at the stars outside the nearest ship window and does his very best not to think about someone who might as well be his _aunt_ taking part in an organised Breeding Heat, because _Yatagarasu_ ’s mental health team all hate him now and probably wouldn’t be available for counselling. “I swear, you have nothing to worry about; they’re quite accommodating. Give my love to Lúcia?”

Yuuri mumbles his own words of support, and Nicolau leaves, heading for the early lunch break that is due to all of them.

It’s only after the door has swished closed behind him that Minako’s smile fades, and she sighs. “If this keeps up, I can see them asking the top percentile groups to breed at a younger age than usual.”

After the meeting from _hell,_ that feels too pointed.

“I already donate my eggs every year,” Yuuri says, _and what an uncomfortable and undignified process_ that _is,_ more than a little hurt by something that feels _almost_ like an accusation from someone he trusts. His hair still smells of plum wine, the scent fresh every time he brushes back his fringe from his face.

Minako picks up her datapad from the table, scrolling through it idly for a few moments to check for anything important before switching off its display. Without the light shining directly in her face, some of the shadows under his eyes disappear. “I _know,_ Yuuri, but you know what I mean. The fully natural method tends to make more babies. You’ve been donating your genetic material since you were eighteen, and it’s yielded - what? Three kids?”

“Two of them are twins,” Yuuri says a little sulkily, scooping up his own datapad to wrap his arms around it protectively, against his chest. Identical alpha girls.

Yuuri is unmated, unmarried, and twenty-three. He will be twenty-four in a few months, and should thus be safe from the Breeding Programme badgering him to get pregnant for at least four-and-a-bit more years. That hadn’t stopped them from asking him at eighteen to donate his eggs, looking at the high rate of fertile children in his family tree, and Yuuri had been happy to do _that,_ at least, not looking to get pregnant himself at that point in time.

Or _this_ point in time. Not yet.

Yuuri hadn’t wanted to know anything about any of his potential biological offspring if possible, not wanting to grow attached to children that he is going to have nothing to do with, but the Breeding Programme has to put a generic list of his offspring down in his information along with details of when and how that offspring has been made - plus notes that his eggs are prone to dividing and creating a pregnancy with multiples.

All of that means, with so few babies born on the ship each year, it is not hard to spot two little identical dark-haired girls toddling around the place with their beaming parents and connect their presence with the listed twins in Yuuri’s private profile.

They have a little omega half-brother somewhere. Yuuri doesn’t know where.

“All the more reason for them to ask you to carry your own pregnancy,” says Minako, and her words hook into Yuuri’s chest again and hurt. “With your lineage, kiddo, it’s a pretty sure bet you’ll conceive. Alphas and betas should be tripping all over themselves for the honour to have you.”

“It’s all done by computer,” Yuuri says quietly. He doesn’t want to be wanted just because _he can make babies._ “Even the selection pool offered to each individual is chosen by the computer, to yield the most genetically advantageous offspring.”

Not that Yuuri has the most faith in the computer, as some kind of error on it means it has Yuuri listed as a _top percentile_ omega. His family tree might have a high reproductive yield of fertile offspring, but Yuuri himself is as plain as anyone can be. His face is bland, his body is unremarkable, and his personality has all the attractiveness of an old damp sock. He has no terribly unique talents.

Health-wise, Yuuri isn’t dying, but he has poor eyesight and gains weight easily. And never sheds it, his body shape permanently hovering around ‘chubby pear’. His physical prowess is subpar enough he had managed to _utterly humiliate himself and his family name_ at the last Intership Games, and his theoretical tests and intelligence scores are average. Career-wise, he’s only the _Second_ Chief Operating Officer in Recreations, and Minako is probably the only reason they haven’t fired him from the position yet.

Minako does not seem to have the same qualms. “They’ll have to find someone pretty special to match up with you, Yuuri. Your mother set a very high bar with both you and Mari.”

And what, exactly, is Yuuri supposed to say to _that?_ He hardly wants to spill out his own insecurities to Minako, knowing fine well she would scold him for his doubts and just tell him he’s wrong - just like she has to, feels obliged to, as someone who loves him.

“Yeah,” Yuuri manages rather weakly instead. _Yeah,_ as if any alpha with half a brain would want to spend a Breeding Heat with someone like _Yuuri,_ never mind potentially have Yuuri carry their offspring.

Minako - dear, terrifying, well-meaning Minako - does not catch Yuuri’s lack of investment in her visions of his future. Usually she’s sharper than this, but her datapad _ping_ s, alerting her to a message she’s just received, and- and that’s the life of a Chief Executive Officer on the UESS _Yatagarasu._ Frequently distracted. “You’re to turn them down flat if they’re not drop-dead gorgeous, you hear me? And if they have two left feet. It would be _criminal_ to waste those sublime dancer’s genes of yours.” In the glow of her datapad’s light again, Minako looks like a vampire from the tales of earth. Ageless and ancient. Some kind of vengeful youkai at least.

“You seem very certain they’re going to ask us to have children sooner than usual.”

“Can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Something’s gotta give, and it’s what _I’d_ do if I were in charge of the Breeding Programme.” Minako hums, prodding at something on the screen in her grip. “Didn’t you always want children?”

Yuuri always had- _does._ Yuuri loves children. Yuuri wants to one day have children of his own - but, outside of all the terrible decisions he makes in the midst of his truly wretched solo heats, he wants to have them with his _mate._ Not _a_ mate. _His_ mate, a life-partner. It doesn’t matter if, like Nicolau and Lúcia, Yuuri is attached to someone who cannot give him their biological child - donors exist. What matters is that Yuuri wants to raise his - _their -_ children with them, from pregnancy to birth, a baby wailing in the night to the distant future where Yuuri himself is old and grey and his adult child will be there for family jokes and dinners and memories, to hold Yuuri’s and their other parent’s hand.

Yuuri wants to make a family in love, not-

Not be just another baby-maker, interchangeable with a dozen other fucks on-board.

He has his parents’ happy marriage as an example, each of his four grandparents, and his childhood friends, Yuuko and Takeshi Nishigori - who had found each other young and are considered one of the luckiest sets of married mates on-board, because they are both fertile and have three beautiful little five year-old girls. Triplets, and Yuuri’s three goddaughters.

No-one else has ever had triplets in the seventy-two years of their journey. Taking them to the parks on-board those times their parents need a babysitter often earns Yuuri some dark and jealous looks: Axel, Lutz and Loop are too young to understand why grown adults frequently glare at their parents and guardians or weep at them, too busy cooing at the birds in the trees and the baby otters in the river, chasing butterflies through the grass to bring back the best photograph to Yuuri. They’re all brilliant with technology, and Axel and Loop have already declared that they want to be a wildlife conservationist and a medical doctor respectively - but then, it’s not as though the girls have many playmates their own age or thereabouts to distract them.

“I think I’ll go back to the inn for lunch,” Yuuri decides, tucking his datapad under his arm. He could do with some of his mother’s cooking and comfort to fill up the gaping maw in his middle, never mind the calories, and to be surrounded by the familiar sights, sounds and smells of his childhood home. “Will you come as well?”

Minako considers it, but then her pad pings with another message and she sighs. (Yuuri _never_ wants a promotion.) “Tell your parents I’ll be along this evening instead, would you?”

Yuuri nods and leaves with a soft _ja, mata ne,_ ducking his head to stretch out a kink in his neck as he walks. The pain there is undoubtedly stress-related - faint but annoying, centred high on his nape and wrapping tendrils of stiffness around his throat like an unwanted fuckboy from behind. It resists the rub of Yuuri’s spare hand, fingers and the heel of his palm pressing in hard to work out the knots, and Yuuri’s own scent drifts out in the air around him from the accidental stimulation to his scent-glands - a scent that Yuuko swears blind smells like a fresh, sweet breeze in the ship’s open gardens, but, to Yuuri, especially when he’s stressed, just smells vaguely like an extremely sad cucumber.

His sad cucumber smell gets even _sadder_ when, head still down, Yuuri walks smack-bang into someone coming at speed in the other direction.

Yuuri bounces off the other person, stumbles, and only doesn’t end up on the floor because strong hands fly up to grip his upper arms, anchoring him upright. His datapad, however, isn’t as lucky and clatters noisily to the floor, its thin edge trying to slice off Yuuri’s toes in his shoes on the way down.

 _“Yuuri,_ ” breathes Yuuri’s saviour, with the same kind of reverence Yuuri reserves for his _itadakimasu_ after he’s been dreaming of katsudon all day and his mother has just placed a huge steaming bowl of it right in front of him.

Yuuri has no idea who would use that tone of voice for _him_ \- and especially not when he currently smells like something that’s died three weeks ago in the fridge -, but is pathetically grateful for the warm hands steadying him on his feet again, as well as the light, relaxing scent wrapping around him like a happy _hello_ , free of anger and irritation. Like the warm woodsy smell of freshly-stripped bark mingling with the flowering-blossom smell that hangs in Main Park just after the flowers have opened. “I’m sorry; I wasn’t looking where I was going -”

“It’s fine,” says Yuuri’s saviour, and- and Yuuri knows that voice, a frisson of dread shivering up his spine. Oh. Oh _no -_ “I shouldn’t have been running in the corridor.”

Yuuri looks up.

Third Lieutenant Viktor Nikiforov - the runaway winner of both the Men’s 60m Sprint and the Men’s Figure-Skating event for the UESS _Yatagarasu_ at the last Intership Games, rated on-board as the _#1 Desirable Male Alpha_ for six years running in _three_ separate polls, with a current _Slap That Booty_ rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 and just generally an all around deity of the cosmos made pure and perfect flesh (that Yuuri would besmirch even by drooling in Viktor's direction, because Viktor's shoulder-to-waist ratio in his fitted blue command uniform is enough to make Yuuri’s little gay heart weep snot-streaked tears of gratitude) - beams at him.

Yuuri-

Yuuri is going to swallow his own tongue. “...Lieutenant Nikiforov?”

“Viktor, please.” Viktor has a wide, lovely smile. Shaped like a heart. Or a baked bean. (Yuuri’s _brain_ feels like a baked bean, dried to a husk under the bright blue of Viktor’s eyes on him.) “I’m off-duty at the moment.” He sounds out of breath. From running?

“...Right,” says Yuuri uselessly. He is never going to call Viktor _Viktor_ to his face, because then Yuuri would never be able to stop and also he would die. “Can I help you?” There isn’t much going on in this corridor at the moment now that the meeting has concluded - but Viktor is part of the ship’s high command structure, and would’ve known about the meeting. Perhaps he needs someone who was there? “The First Lieutenant left for the bridge quite a while ago if you were looking for him, but Minako is still inside the meeting room if you need to speak with her? You’d best be quick because she’ll be trying to escape for her lunch break.”

“Actually,” says Viktor, his smile softening to something precious that makes Yuuri’s insides whine and want to tip his head, offer Viktor his throat in invitation, “I came to see you.”

Yuuri’s hallucinations are getting quite vivid these days.

“What,” says Yuuri. And then - because it can’t be a hallucination when he can feel Viktor’s grip turning soft on his arms, feel Viktor’s thumbs rubbing unconscious little circles through the fabric of Yuuri’s shirt -, with a little more intelligence but a lot more horror, “Is something I designed broken? Please say it’s just the waterfall.” The waterfall should be the easiest to mend. “I _knew_ the waterfall was a terrible idea, logistically, but I’d always dreamt of seeing one in real life.”

“What?” Viktor looks perplexed, a soft little crease between his eyebrows that Yuuri has never seen before, wants to reach out and smooth away with his fingertips. It’s amazing: Yuuri has seen Viktor around the ship a _lot_ before, and there are even more pictures of him on the intranet (Viktor is a popular subject for photography), but none with this perplexed face. “No, nothing’s broken.” Then, curiously: “You designed a waterfall?”

“You haven’t seen my waterfall?” Yuuri frowns, something within him quite stung at the snub. How can someone have _not_ seen his waterfall? There’s only one on-board! And then he remembers just who he is frowning _at_ and panics. “...It’s fine! You’re not missing much. It’s just.” Uh. “Falling water. A waterfall.”

 _Falling water. A waterfall._ Stellar use of his extensive vocabulary there. If Yuuri had his hands free, he’d slap them over his reddening face and groan. _Not only do most of the chief officers and executives on-board think I’m an alcoholic, but now I’m an_ idiot _on top of that._

Viktor completely misses the memo that every cell in Yuuri’s body wants to curl over and die on the floor in front of him. “A real waterfall?” he demands, actually jerking Yuuri a little closer to him in his fervour and rattling Yuuri’s gaze back up to his face. “With rocks?”

Lost in a fresh up-close haze of Viktor’s scent, in gawking at Viktor’s perfect everything, Yuuri’s mouth is still failing to engage his brain before use. “We’re on a spaceship; of course it’s not a real waterfall?”

Yuuri, the idiot, has just corrected one of the smartest men on-board _Yatagarasu._ Yuuri, who cannot even describe a waterfall.

“...Right,” says Viktor, and flushes pink across his nose. Yuuri wants to _die._ Please. “Right, that’s- that’s not what I came to talk to you about. Though I’m sure it’s a very lovely waterfall! Even without rocks!”

“It has rocks,” Yuuri says, because foot-in-mouth syndrome is terminal. “It’s not very big, but I wanted it to look like a natural waterfall on earth, with the water falling from the source and finding its own path down to the river below.”

Why can’t he stop talking about the stupid waterfall?! Viktor has already said that he didn’t come to talk about the stupid waterfall! Viktor probably does not care the _slightest bit_ about the stupid waterfall!

“I can’t believe I’ve never seen it,” Viktor says thoughtfully, and- and Yuuri wants to cry a little (a lot), because it’s really very kind of Viktor to entertain Yuuri’s stupidity like this. It’s why Viktor keeps winning the _#1 Desirable Male Alpha_ polls - well, that, and Viktor, with his beautiful blue eyes, swooshy hair like spun starlight and 4.5 stars posterior, is a gorgeous specimen of humanity, and also, according to gossip, has a tattoo on his collarbone.

A hollow black circle, with a vertical blue line across its diameter. The tattoo of a virile alpha.

People would _kill_ to have Viktor’s babies.

(Yuuri, when his resolve is weakened and his inhibitions are drastically lowered by being in pre-heat or heat, would kill to have Viktor’s babies. Something in him _cries_ to have babies for an alpha as kind and smart and handsome as Viktor, a little hiccup trapping itself behind Yuuri’s ribs at the thought of Viktor swinging a little boy or girl up into his arms with the same beautiful eyes and bean-shaped smile as him. With Yuuri’s dark hair, Yuuri’s nose, with Yuuri’s arms and scent and love wrapped around both of them.

Even huddled in his pre-heat blanket-nest like an angry hedgehog, Yuuri would _maim_ someone, at least, if they went too near Viktor or looked at Yuuri funny. Or if they stole the last of Yuuri’s favourite green tea-flavoured mochi snacks which he hoards especially for his heats. (In Yuuri’s defence, he would maim someone for taking his favourite mochi snacks even when he _isn’t_ in heat or preheat. They’re his favourite for a reason, and there is never a large supply of them on-board because they’re such a pain to make.)

Yuuri hates his heats. Physically, the scent-glands on his throat and wrists and between his slickened thighs all start aching early when one of his heats is coming on, well before the heat _actually_ arrives, and Yuuri usually tears at them - throbbing, itching, _burning_ for some relief, a mark - with his own nails those times he forgets to clip his nails beforehand. He has to spend the days after one of his heats sore, dehydrated and with bandages around his neck and covering his arms from wrist to elbow like some kind of discount horror-movie mummy.

Yuuri can’t _help_ it. He hates the itching.

Mentally and emotionally- mentally, heats make Yuuri’s brain turn to wailing mush. His emotions swing wildly between wild lust, sweaty, peevish irritation and desperately lonely sorrow, and he often finds himself huddled in his nest with his datapad on the intranet in the lulls between the spikes of his heat, running the on-board consanguinity programme for his own DNA and Viktor’s (occasionally other alphas and betas, but usually Viktor’s). Despite how many times he’s ran it, his heat makes him stupid, and he has to check, check _again,_ that there is nothing - except the requirement of a _miracle_ \- to impede Viktor and him from courting, mating, from Viktor pinning Yuuri down in the soft fluff at the bottom of Yuuri’s nest with his body and fucking the rising heat out of Yuuri like an animal, his wrists in Viktor’s hands and Viktor’s teeth in his throat, Viktor’s hips snapping against Yuuri’s arse until Yuuri is sobbing from it, begging for it, until Viktor can put his knot and his seed and his babies in Yuuri’s belly. Until Yuuri is fucked-out and purring from it, Viktor’s hand rubbing his swollen abdomen, Yuuri’s mouth pressing wet kisses to the sweet thin skin of Viktor’s wrists.

...Yuuri really, _really_ hates his heats.)

“Is it in the Main Park?” Viktor asks, because apparently they’re still discussing the waterfall since Yuuri can’t shut up about it. The waterfall that isn’t even broken. Probably.

Yuuri shakes his head, and tries to get Viktor’s scent of woodbark and blossoms out of his nose. It’s making him think dumb, dangerous thoughts, and yearn for things that he will never have. “No, it’s part of the Serenity Garden Zone.” One of the major recreation areas on the ship, deliberately set aside from the main hustle and bustle to give the people on-board somewhere to retreat to away from their work.

Viktor perks up, smiling again. “Your family owns one of the holiday inns there, right?”

Despite himself, Yuuri finds himself smiling in answer to the question and nodding shyly, preening a little that Viktor Nikiforov actually knows this stupid little detail about _him._ In Viktor’s busy life, finds it something important enough to remember. “ _Yu-topia._ The bathhouse.”

Yu-topia has been in the Katsuki family since Yuuri’s great-grandparents on his father’s side - his grandfather Tadao’s mothers -, designed to look like a traditional Japanese onsen on earth. There are no hot springs on-board a spaceship, of course, but the inn’s baths use heated mineral water and are mostly built ‘outside’ the main inn building, in the gardens, to maintain the illusion.

“I’ve been thinking of taking a holiday there,” Viktor says, and almost seems a little nervous when he licks his lips, adding a hesitant, “perhaps you could show me around?”

...Show him…around?

“...I’m sure my parents and sister would be honoured to have you at the inn,” Yuuri says slowly, absolutely confused, “but I’m afraid I don’t have any holiday time available to show you around, Lieutenant.”

Yuuri has exactly a day and a half of holiday time left at his disposal, and its use has already been promised away for his sister’s birthday and catch-up time with Yuuko.

“Oh,” says Viktor, and deflates. “But I could see you around the inn in the evenings?”

That would be nice, but - “I don’t live there anymore,” says Yuuri.

Viktor falters even further, and Yuuri takes the opportunity to slip out of his grip and pick up his poor battered datapad from the floor. “You- you don’t?”

“Not for two years now?” Living in the Serenity Garden Zone had been a luxury others had been extremely jealous of when Yuuri had been younger, but it had been much better for Yuuri and his hopelessness in the mornings to get accommodations on the ship closer to the Recreations offices and meeting rooms.

“But you must visit often?” Viktor asks, and Yuuri squints at him, because Viktor is beginning to sound a little desperate. Does he need a guide that badly?

Viktor might not have seen Yuuri’s waterfall, but surely he must have been to the Serenity Garden Zone before? Even with Viktor being famous on-board for rarely taking any holidays, he must’ve surely gone there at the weekend at some point? In the evenings, for a meal with friends? For a date? It’s a popular date spot, especially at the earliest part of the nightcycle, just as the lanterns come on amongst the trees and the birds sing their last song before they go to sleep.

But- but Viktor had come to ask _Yuuri_ about Yu-topia and the Serenity Garden Zone. Yuuri, who he doesn’t know at all, except vaguely in passing.

Maybe Viktor really _is_ desperate for a guide?

“Not as often as I’d like,” Yuuri admits. Or as often as he should, according to his grandmother. “You know, if you need a guide for the area, you _can_ just ask my sister? Mari Katsuki.” Yuuri smiles, trying to be reassuring. Hopefully he isn’t spoiling Viktor’s holiday plans. “She’s not as terrifying as the rumours say she is.”

“That’s-” Viktor starts, and then seems to notice the way Yuuri has stepped back from him, frowning down at the distance between them and then looking back up at Yuuri’s face again. His empty hands slowly droop down until they rest at his sides again, fingers slowly curling into his palms. “Right. Right, I’ll- I’ll consider that.”

“I hope you have a wonderful holiday,” Yuuri tells him earnestly. The baths at Yu-topia really _are_ wonderful, like nothing else on-board _Yatagarasu,_ and Yuuri is proud of them and his family who maintain and improve them _._ “So, um,” Yuuri begins edging to the side, hinting at his need to get past Viktor and onwards to food, “if that was all you wanted…?”

“You must be busy,” Viktor says quietly, and Yuuri blushes, ducking his head.

“...Something like that.” Like lunch before what will probably be a hellish afternoon. And Yuuri not wanting to make more of a fool of himself in front of the Third Lieutenant. “I’ll see you around?” From very, very far away.

“See you around,” Viktor echoes, and Yuuri takes the opportunity to brush past him, one last burst of bark and blossoms in his nose - “Yuuri, I’ll be sure to check out your waterfall.”

There are a few things Yuuri would like Viktor to check out, and the top one on the list is not Yuuri’s _waterfall_.

Yuuri doesn’t know what to say. Yuuri doesn’t know what to say, so he smiles over his shoulder at Viktor - aware the expression on his face is probably reflecting the panic of his thoughts and comes off as _hysterical,_ God help him -, clutches his datapad to his chest like it will be able to stop his pounding heart from leaping out of his chest in a blood-splattered mess on the floor, and flees.


End file.
